HOHHOT, INNER
MONGOLIA AUTONOMOUS
REGION, China—The
road to our hotel
from the Central
Railroad Station,
lit brightly by neon
signs, passes a
hulking white
structure plunged in
darkness that
stretches for
blocks. It is
described by our
guide as a new
mosque, now under
construction in this
provincial capital.
Across the road is a
lineup of smaller,
brightly lit
mosques, their
minarets thrusting
into the starlit
sky.

This is Islamic
Street, as it is
known in the tourist
brochures—for the
rare tourists who
happen to find
themselves to this
spot, deep within
China’s vast
interior, or the
delegation of 45
Pakistani Muslims,
touring the nation
to assess its
religious tolerance.
For this
neighborhood, while
comprising a handful
of small mosques and
a few thousand
professed adherents,
is largely a
Disneyland of
religion. Many of
the minarets,
caution several
local Muslims, are
simply
window-dressing atop
department stores
and shopping malls.

The oldest mosque in
this neighborhood
was completed in
1693. Five times
each day, its imam,
Mai Yung Chang, dons
his floor-length
robe and strides
from his office into
the cobblestone
courtyard to welcome
the faithful as the
muezzin calls them
to prayer. On
Fridays, the
congregation can
number 200 to 300
persons, though at
the end of Ramadan
it can easily swell
to 1,200 or
more—city
authorities even
closing down lanes
of traffic on the
main thoroughfare so
that the overflow
crowd can drop to
their knees in
prayer in the middle
of the street.

Mai has served this
congregation for
just six months,
though he studied
for two years under
his predecessor.
And, while cautious
in the presence of a
western visitor,
albeit accompanied
by one of his flock
serving as an
interpreter, agrees
that his way is not
always a smooth one.

“There is a Muslim
department of the
city and I talk to
them,” he says. “I
have good relations
with them. Still,
some things they
don’t accept Muslims
to do. The problem
is they don’t care,
because they aren’t
Muslims. That is the
only real problem
here.” This
manifests itself,
most directly, in
the building spree
along Islam Street.
Just behind the old
mosque, and towering
over it, is a series
of brilliant white
minarets atop the
sparkling new
building that we’d
seen in the dark on
our first night—now
in the final stages
of construction. The
problem is that the
structure has little
to do with religion.

“The first time I
saw it, I thought,
‘Wow, nice,’”
recalls a Muslim
from Pakistan who
has been living and
working for a couple
of years in Hohhot.
“It would be lovely
as a mosque. But
then I found it
would be a
‘cultural-shopping
center.’ It’s just a
shopping mall.” In
short, a showplace
for visiting Muslim
delegations, such as
the group from
Pakistan’s
Jamaat-e-Islami, who
spent four months
touring China and
concluded that Islam
was alive and well
here.

But if Islam—and the
Hui, an Islamic
ethnic minority
group—is allowed to
thrive, it’s because
its leaders have
largely eschewed the
confrontational
route taken by other
minorities,
particularly the
Mongolians, whose
land, many feel, has
been usurped by the
Han Chinese. These
settlers, who
flooded in,
especially after the
arrival in power of
the Communist Party
in 1949, are the
core of the Chinese
leadership,
dominating the
political, economic,
social, and cultural
life of China. For
more than 400 years,
Hohhot, meaning “a
green city,” has
served as a northern
frontier outpost of
Han China, populated
largely by the same
Mongolian people,
with much the same
language and
traditions as their
counterparts across
the frontier in what
was long known as
Outer Mongolia and
is now the
independent
Mongolian republic.

Indeed the Mongols
are perhaps the
single most
sensitive, and in
many respects, the
most visible,
minority in their
own land. To calm
these passions,
boiling just below
the surface,
virtually every sign
on every shop is
written both in
Chinese and in the
runic-style old
vertical script of
Mongolia that even
the independent
nation to the north
has shunned since
the Russians imposed
a Cyrillic-style
alphabet after their
takeover in 1921.
The nominal ruler of
Inner Mongolia is
Bagatur, an ethnic
Mongol (like many,
he uses a single
name) whose title is
“chairman of the
autonomous region
people’s
government,” and who
has also served for
a decade as deputy
secretary of the
region’s Communist
Party.

But in fact the real
power here is
reserved to a young,
up-and-coming Han
Chinese party
operative named Hu
Chunhua who was
parachuted into
Hohhot as the party
secretary two years
ago after a brief,
if distinguished,
career in the same
post in neighboring
Hebei Province. Hu,
who a source close
to the leadership of
the Communist Party
in Beijing suggests
may be being groomed
to succeed his
namesake Hu Jintao
(no familial
relationship) as
president of China,
began his career as
a party cadre in
Tibet in 1983, the
year he graduated
from prestigious
Beijing University.
For the next 24
years, Hu worked his
way up through the
party ranks, much of
it in the volatile
Tibet region,
winding up as party
leader there from
2001 through 2007,
leaving just ahead
of the ethnic
violence of 2008
that saw a
near-uprising by
Tibetans against Han
Chinese and native
Huis—their shops
vandalized and
burned.

Containing such
intractable and
volatile forces
could be a vitally
important skill for
China’s future
leadership, so Hu
Chunhua a generation
(21 years) younger
than 69-year-old
President Hu Jintao,
may be accumulating
a resume that makes
him uniquely
positioned. Indeed
there’s been no
shortage of such
challenges since his
arrival in Inner
Mongolia. In May,
Mergen, a Mongolian
herder, was struck
and killed—dragged
500 feet across his
pastureland—by a
coal truck, driven
by a Han Chinese
worker. Mergen and
several other
Mongolians had been
protesting the
destruction by
mining operations of
the fragile
grasslands where
they have pastured
their herds for
centuries. Five days
later, another
protestor was killed
at a coal mine by a
forklift driver
while protesting
Mergen’s death.
Outraged Mongolians
took the streets in
towns across the
region.

Hu responded
promptly and
forcibly—declaring
martial law and
sending in masses of
security forces,
setting up
roadblocks, while
ranks helmeted
police surrounded
Inner Mongolia
University, seen to
be a focal point of
the protests. The
wife of one foreign
businessman who’s
lived there for
several years,
describes how she
was in her car,
driven by her
family’s chauffeur,
near the university,
when she used her
iPhone to snap a
photo of the massive
police presence to
show her daughter,
who is studying
abroad.

“They were right on
us,” she tells a
visitor.
“Plainclothes
security men dragged
both of us from my
car and bundled us
into an unmarked
car.” They were
taken, she says, to
what was described
to her as a “black
prison,” after their
cell phones were
confiscated and the
contraband photo
deleted.

“No one will know
where you are, we
can do with you what
we want, we can hold
you indefinitely,
you will never be
found, and we will
kill your driver,”
she recalls the
officers telling
them. When the
secret police showed
up at the building
where they were
taking her, however,
she saw several
thousand students
and others also
crammed inside. She
was petrified as the
doors were unchained
and she was pushed
roughly into the
makeshift facility.
Fortunately, her
driver had managed
to secrete a second
cell phone and
managed a brief call
to her husband, a
consultant with a
powerfully connected
local Chinese
company. Officials
of the company
quickly began making
calls, though it
took hours before
she was released.
Four months later,
she is still shaken
from the experience.

Calm has returned,
at least for the
moment, to Hohhot.
Hu met with students
and promised justice
for the two killings
and there are
reports that as many
as four Han Chinese
have been arrested,
with one already put
on trial for the
second death. This
may be the ultimate
test for Hu ahead of
the next major party
Congress in 2020.
And so far, it’s
working. The only
demonstration since
May fizzled out when
barely 100 lukewarm
protestors showed up
in Hohhot and
quickly melted away.

But throughout, the
accumulation of
wealth has
continued—largely,
however, for the Han
Chinese who dominate
business and society
here. Indeed this
may prove to be the
most significant
test for Hu. Can he
sustain the vast
accumulation of
wealth that seems
only to be
accelerating during
his regime? Many
local entrepreneurs
have already
assembled strikingly
visible wealth—not
quite as fabulous,
perhaps as some of
the great families
of Beijing or
Shanghai, but
sufficient to
support boutiques
along the lines of
Louis Vuitton and
Salvatore Ferragamo,
with comparably
lavish salons of
Ermengildo Zegna and
Bose promised for
this Fall. Apple
doesn’t have an
owned-and-operated
store here yet, but
its “licensed
reseller” does quite
a handsome business
of young, affluent
locals playing with
the latest versions
of the iPad, MacBook
Air, and iMac with
the very largest
screens. And all
this in China’s
48thlargest city.

Along one of a
myriad of broad
shopping boulevards
is a string of large
department stores.
One, in particular,
with an enormous
Hsin Hua [New China]
book store on the
top floor has a
jaw-dropping array
of appliances,
electrical equipment
and the like,
stretching off to
the
horizon—basically,
everything
imaginable and
unimaginable (how
about a washer-dryer
that operates off an
iPad app) that has
ever born the mark
“Made in China.”
It’s hard to see
that after this, how
anything in
Beijing—our next,
and final leg of our
expedition, could be
surprising.

*****
*****

David A. Andelman,
editor of
World Policy Journal,
in Hohhot, capital
of China’s Inner
Mongolia Autonomous
Region, heads next
to Beijing on the
eight and final leg
of a five-week
expedition through
Russia, Siberia,
Mongolia, and China.